Liberals must face up to their hypocrisy
in backing a president who lied under oath in a sexual harassment lawsuit.

BY
ANDREW ROSS | After
the impeachment vote, President Clinton said he hoped that the legacy of
his trials and tribulations would be to suck the poison, once and for all,
out of American politics.

It was a noble thought, and if achieved, it would be a
wondrous legacy of his presidency. At this point, it is hard to see how
the threshing cycle of political murder and revenge eating away at the
vitals of American democracy will be slowed. The grotesque impeachment
proceedings, the cynical Republican rhetoric about "the rule of law," the
rank abuses of prosecutorial power exercised by the independent counsel,
the vindictiveness, the trampling of rights, the blatant coup in broad
daylight -- these will long be angrily remembered.

Testifying on behalf of the coup's opponents, historian
Sean Wilentz told the House Judiciary Committee that history would "hunt
down" those who voted for impeachment. In faint echoes of the civil rights
and anti-war days, celebrity
teach-ins are springing up and protesters are taking to the streets.
A veritable crusade is shaping up on behalf of a president whom writer
Mary Gordon, in
the pages of Salon, likened to the martyred Billy Budd.

But before we throw on the chain mail of righteousness,
let us imagine that it is not President Clinton on whose behalf we are
fighting the good fight, but George W. Bush III, who has overcome his own
rather colorful past, or Robert Packwood, who instead of being bundled
out of the Senate for sexual matters, has acceded to the highest office
in the land.

Let us suppose it was President Packwood who had testified
under oath in a sexual harassment deposition and in a federal grand jury
proceeding, understanding that failure to tell the truth ("the whole truth")
could result in charges of perjury and obstruction of justice.

Question: Have you ever given any gifts to Monica
Lewinsky?

Packwood: I don't recall.

We would know that President Packwood, under oath, had
told a flat-out lie. Would we -- good liberals and feminists who have been
in the forefront of virtually criminalizing, under the guise of "sexual
harassment," any sexual contact between men and women in the workplace
-- have been so easily forgiving of this lie? Would it really have been
OK with us had it been President Packwood, rather than President Clinton,
who also knew that Lewinsky, an intern young enough to be his daughter,
was filing a blatantly false affidavit in which she swore, "There is absolutely
no sex of any kind in any manner, shape or form [my italics] with
President Clinton"? Are we so sure we would have dismissed this president's
callous indifference to Lewinsky's putting herself in criminal harm's way
as "private behavior" or merely "lying about sex"?

Then, of course, there would be the evasions and obfuscations
in President Packwood's federal grand jury testimony. What the meaning
of "is" is. She aroused me, I didn't arouse her. What he and Lewinsky did
together "did not constitute sexual relations as I understood that term
to be defined." And how sympathetic to President Packwood would we be after
hearing the president's own counsel say to the House Judiciary Committee:
"Reasonable people, and you maybe have reached this conclusion, could determine
that he crossed over that line, and that what for him was truthful but
misleading or nonresponsive and misleading or evasive, was in fact false."
Or this, from "a longtime advisor" to the president: "For the president
of the United States to lie before a grand jury is a big deal. I don't
care if the lie is about a fender-bender or about sex. We always knew that
perjury before a grand jury was a dastardly, very serious act that most
people would not tolerate."

Would we be so tolerant of President Packwood's perjury?
And what would we be thinking as members of his own party got up during
the House impeachment debate and, one by one, called his behavior "inexcusable,"
"deplorable," "indefensible"? "He broke the law? Probably so." Would we
not be looking increasingly askance as we read the actual
text of the censure motion offered by President Packwood's party, which
states that the president "egregiously failed" the obligations implicit
in his oath of office, to "set an example of high moral standards and conduct
himself in a manner that fosters respect for the truth." Further, his actions
"violated the trust of the American people, lessened their esteem for the
office of the President and dishonored the office which they have entrusted
to him." What more would it take to get people marching in the streets
with placards demanding, "Packwood must go !"

Would Toni Morrison have risen up to lionize President
Packwood had he so "egregiously failed?" Would she and other literary lions
have affixed their signatures to various anti-impeachment petitions had
it been President Packwood who, according to loyal aide Sidney Blumenthal's
grand jury testimony, compared himself to "a character in the novel 'Darkness
at Noon' ... I feel like a character in an oppressive farce that is creating
a lie about me and I can't get the truth out." Rather than defending President
Packwood, Morrison might have pointed out that the book's author, Arthur
Koestler -- not to mention the real victims about whom Koestler so eloquently
wrote -- would be appalled by the way President Packwood cynically exploited
literary truth in the service of the big lie he was telling to all around
hi m.

And before the rest of us get too misty-eyed about ending
the politics of character assassination, we might want to take a closer
look at our own record in this area. There's Packwood himself, of course,
run out of town by California Sen. Barbara Boxer and assorted feminists
in full-throated roar for copping smooches with female staffers. Then there's
former Texas Sen. John Tower, whose crime was that he enjoyed a drink or
two, and failed Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork, whose video rental receipts
were paraded in front of the world. And of course Clarence Thomas, pitted
against Anita Hill -- the liberals' equivalent of Paula Jones -- with a
sex harassment smear every bit as bogus as the one used to bring down Clinton.

As for Clinton, perhaps he meant it when he called, in
his post-impeachment Rose Garden speech Saturday afternoon, for an "end
to the politics of personal destruction." But in his own case, that heartfelt
call is beside the point. If in the end the forces arrayed in his defense
prove insufficient, nobody will have brought down Clinton except himself.
Richard
Mellon Scaife didn't tell him to avail himself of Monica Lewinsky's
charms; Kenneth Starr didn't tell him to lie about it for seven months.
Henry
Hyde didn't tell the president to hand a gun to his sworn enemies and
suggest they shoot him at point-blank range. In Clinton's case, a call
for an end to the politics of self-destruction might be more apropos. And
it would suit the rest of us to apportion responsibility accordly.